


The Deflowering of Ferret Face

by Wolfsheart



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: American History, Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Ferret face, Heavy Drinking, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Slash, Insubordination, Korean War, M/M, Military, Whining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsheart/pseuds/Wolfsheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a typical day at the M*A*S*H* 4077th.  Hawkeye drinks to escape.  Frank drinks to be accepted.  Drunk surgeons don't listen to reason, so drunk surgeons wind up in bed with their enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deflowering of Ferret Face

**Author's Note:**

> This was the result of another request from a friend from Livejournal. She picked the pair and fandom, I wrote the fic. She asked for the insane -- Hawkeye and Frank -- because we were both raised watching M*A*S*H*, so this is almost like a sacred cow. However, she's kind of a masochist. 
> 
> I hope my father forgives me for this and isn't rolling in his grave.

He wasn’t the best doctor, and he wasn’t the best soldier, but Frank could quote the rules and regulations of the army better than anyone else...except for Margaret (who happened to be the best nurse _and_ the best soldier in the whole 4077 th).  But Frank Burns knew that what made a soldier was _not_ being a lisping, limp-wristed fairy like Pvt. George Weston.  He’d deserved to get beaten up by men in his regiment, and if Frank weren’t a doctor, he would have taken tire iron to the man, too. 

If only Pierce and McIntyre had let him file for that dishonorable discharge...if only they didn’t try to shelter that... _man_. 

If only Weston hadn’t been allowed to get away with it. 

If only...

Frank shoved his hands into his pockets and slouched his way to the Officer’s Club, thinking he’d have some peace and quiet since the two pains in his backside were supposed to be in post-op doing their rounds.  He didn’t like that just _any_ enlisted man was allowed in there, but at least, they left him alone.  Most people left Frank alone. 

Stepping up, he sagged onto one of the bar stools and dropped his forearms onto bar.  When Igor didn’t respond at first, Frank started to tap his fingers and hum something he remembered from Sunday school.  When he still wasn’t responded to, the tapping became more impatient until finally, he huffed and slapped a palm onto the bar. 

“Private Straminsky, do you always make it a point to ignore senior officers?  I could have you under tent arrest for ignoring a Major,” he whined in his best authoritative tone. 

The tall, gangly private loped over from where he’d been flirting with one of the nurses and leaned down in front of Frank until the Major drew back.  “I was busy with a customer, Major Burns.  I’m sorry.  What would you like?” 

Frank pursed his thin lips and raised his pointy nose until he thought he appeared to be staring down the private, and in his usual higher pitched voice answered, “Ohhhhh...I don’t know.  How about a Fuzzy Navel?”

Igor blinked several times and looked behind him.  The shelves were stocked with whatever hooch he could get, or whichever Radar could manage to barter for, and he had just about everything...except the peach schnapps.  He turned his face back to Frank. 

“Sorry, Major, but I’m all out of one of the ingredients.  But how about a Screwdriver?  It’s almost the same, just with vodka instead of peach schnapps, and...well, Major Houlihan was in earlier to get the last of the orange juice to give to one of the men in post-op, so you’ll have to make do with grapefruit juice.” 

The Major stared at him with the look of a petulant teenager.  “But what if I didn’t want a Screwdriver?  And I don’t even like grapefruit juice.  It’s too tart...it’s...well, why can’t you send Klinger to get some of the orange juice back...”

Rolling his eyes, Igor walked over to the shelves, took down the vodka and poured a shot into a glass, filling it the rest of the way with the grapefruit juice.  He set it down in front of Frank and didn’t even quote him a charge as that would set off another tirade of whines and complaints.  When the door opened, his face relaxed in relief to see Hawkeye.  If anyone could keep Frank under some kind of control – or annoy him enough that he’d leave – it was Hawkeye. 

“Evening, Captain Pierce.  Your usual?” Igor greeted, eager to get Hawkeye talking so that Frank would shut up. 

“Evening, Igor.  My usual sounds just fine,” Hawkeye replied and sidled up to the bar, dressed in his usual red bathrobe over his baggy Army olive drab.  “And if there’s any way you can make it a little more _un_ usual, I’ll be forever in your debt.”  He mounted the bar stool the way he would a saddle then leaned against the bar, trying to ignore Frank at first. 

But that voice cut into his calm.  “Hi, Pierce.  Got your rounds done, I see.” 

Hawkeye sighed.  “Yes, Frank.  Rounds are done...Trapper’s keeping the nurses warm now.” 

“Oh...you always have to be disgusting, don’t you?” Frank groused and pursed his lips in the way that made most everyone else want to punch him. 

The red-robed Chief of Surgery just stared at Frank for a moment then looked at Igor when the private handed over a bottle of beer.  “Thanks.  Now if you could just hook up an IV and stick the needle in me so that I don’t have to exert the effort of lifting the bottle to my lips...”  When Igor just offered a smirk, Hawkeye replied, “No?  Alright then, be a stick in the mud,” and he brought the bottle to his mouth and took a rather unhealthy swig, downing the first quarter without taking a breath. 

Minutes ticked by with the number of beer bottles Hawkeye lined across the bar, one right next to the other, forbidding Igor to take them away until he counted eight.  Or at least he thought it was eight.  His eyes focused and unfocused until sometimes it looked like sixteen bottles. 

It had been a particularly trying day in Korea, after all. 

It was a little ironic then that someone put a nickel in the jukebox for Glenn Miller’s ‘Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar’, and Hawkeye was forced to look at Frank’s two ferrety profiles as he peeked over his shoulder to see Nurse Kelly and Klinger dancing.  He watched them until that moment his blurring eyes had to squint or he would lose track of which Kelly was dancing with which Klinger.  Then he opened them and looked back at his empty hands in want of a bottle. 

“I think you’ve had enough tonight, Doc.” 

Hawkeye lifted his head to follow the trail of Igor’s speech, and he tried to piece together what the private was saying.  “But...I’ve just gotten started.  I’ll be good to go a few more rounds.” 

Igor shook his head.  “I’d love to accommodate you, Captain Pierce, but Captain McIntyre isn’t here to carry you back to the Swamp.  Maybe Major Burns could...”

“Certainly _not_ ,” Frank protested and wrinkled his nose at the very suggestion.  Of course, he’d had several drinks himself, so he was quite tipsy, just not half so much as Hawkeye.  Actually, he was drunker than Hawkeye on not half the amount of liquor.  That was the sad thing.  “He’s been rude to me all night, and you saw...”

“Oh Frank,” Hawkeye slurred.  “It’s okay.  I know the real reason why you don’t want to help me back to our humble little home is because you’re not strong enough to carry me there.” 

The slur was enough to raise Frank’s hackles.  To imply that _he_ wasn’t strong enough.  He...an American soldier for the Good Ol’ U.S. of A! ...not strong enough to carry some haphazard drunk across the camp from the ersatz officers’ club to the pigsty he was forced to live in with the two worst wise-cracking so-called captains.  That was...well, that just was...

“I’ll do it!” Frank exclaimed and spun around on the barstool until he almost slipped off.  His legs must have fallen asleep to feel so rubbery!  “Come on, Pierce.  Let’s get you home and into beddy-bye so you can sleep off all this booze.  You degenerate.” 

Hawkeye watched Frank spiral off the stool then swiveled his eye back to Igor.  “And you’re going to entrust this man to take me home?  For shame, Private.  And I thought we were friends,” he said then stood up. 

With reluctance, he picked Frank up from where he had actually tumbled to one knee, and it was the major’s arm that went around Hawkeye’s shoulder and Hawkeye’s arm around Frank’s waist, and it was both of them swaying back and forth as if their bodies were two legs trying to convey the body out of the bar, bumping into table and chair, nearly knocking Kelley into Klinger, which would have toppled the high-heeled Lebanese right into the jukebox.  Perhaps that wasn’t a way to make an exit after all.  The two men stumbled off together in the direction of the Swamp, and somehow, Hawkeye had managed to coax Frank into several out of key verses of ‘Tennessee Waltz’, even though the swaying back and forth made the major just a little green around the gills. 

It was with great effort that the two men, usually enemies in the strictest sense of propriety, managed each other back to the darkened tent with Frank nearly tripping over the tent pole and rope before Hawkeye finally heaved the man over his shoulder and carted him inside like a sack of potatoes.  A sack of potatoes singing, “She goes dancin’ with the darkness to the Tennessee Waltz, and I feel like I’m falling apart, and it’s stronger than drink and it’s deeper than sorrow, this darkness she left in my heart...”

“Alright, Frankie...beddy-bye...,” Hawkeye stated as he fumbled them over to Frank’s cot where he attempted to ease the major down and instead dropped him much harder than intended.  Hawkeye preferred to be sober when he hurt Frank Burns, after all. 

The last thing he remembered was tumbling right over onto Frank’s body. 

*****

When Frank woke up, the sun was already shining, and the clattering of personnel all around the Swamp was business as usual.  What wasn’t business as usual was the fact that _he_ was still buried under his Army issue blanket while it was obvious that Captains Pierce and McIntyre were already gone.  Beds made, shoes picked up, red bathrobe hung up on a hook by Hawkeye’s bed. 

Frank smacked his tongue across the roof of his mouth and wondered why there was a sticky-salty taste in his mouth that was different than usual.  His bottom felt...weird, too.  Sore...sticky...raw...and still stickier.  He looked over to the makeshift nightstand where he kept his Army regulations guide and his Bible stacked together, and sitting there on top of both of them was a tube that crinkled his nose in puzzlement as he scraped through his memory for answers. 

_What would he be doing with K-Y?_


End file.
